The Office of Undergraduate Admissions accepted 3,202 applicants to the Class of 2019 for an overall acceptance rate of 16.4 percent, a rate that remains steady from the previous year. Decisions for the regular application cycle were mailed out Friday.

Georgetown received 19,481 applications to the Class of 2019. While 912 of the applicants were admitted early, 2,290 were accepted as part of the regular decision process. The overall acceptance rate for both early and regular decision cycles was 16.4 percent, nearly identical to the 16.6 percent acceptance rate for the Class of 2018. While the acceptance rate for the Class of 2015 was 18 percent, the rate has hovered around 16 percent for the last four years.

“We pulled back a little on the early number from the previous year, so it does mean that we would have therefore taken more in the regular decision. But we ended with fewer overall, so there weren’t that many more in the regular rate,”” Deacon said.

Georgetown College and the McDonough School of Business both had acceptance rates below 16 percent. The College accepted 1,839 students at a rate of 15.9 percent, a decline from last year’s 16.3 percent, while the MSB admitted 530 students at a rate of 15.7 percent, lower than last year’s 16 percent. The acceptance rate for the MSB has dropped precipitously since it was 22 percent for the Class of 2014.

The School of Foreign Service accepted 627 students at a rate of 17.6 percent, nearly on par with last year’s 17.5 percent. The School of Nursing and Health Studies accepted 206 students at a rate of 19.7 percent, higher than the 17.5 percent acceptance rate for the Class of 2018.

All 50 states were represented in the accepted class, with at least three from each state except for North Dakota, which had one admit. As happened last year, California, New York and New Jersey were the top three states represented, with 377, 368 and 266 students admitted respectively.

Women comprised 55 percent of the admitted class, while men comprised 45 percent.

In a small increase from last year’s 10 percent, 11 percent of the admitted class self-identified as African-American, while 17 percent identified as Asian-American and 12 percent as Hispanic-African, the same percentages as the previous year.

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Charles Deacon (CAS ’64, GRD ’69) said that although the changes were small, college admissions reflected overall changes in the demographics of the country.

“It’s hard to be able to say any dramatic difference from one year to the next. There are some inexorable trends that are under way that continue. To some extent, college admissions in truly national universities is a microcosm of what’s going on out there in the country,” Deacon said. “You’ll see continuing shifting more toward states that are further away and not in the northeast.”

Nine percent of the admitted applicants were foreign citizens, originating from 72 different countries. Last year, admits came from 64 countries. Instead of the notorious thin envelopes of acceptance sent to domestic students, foreign nationals received emails informing them of their acceptance Saturday.

The acceptance rate for the 737 legacy students that applied was 37 percent, consistent with the 36 percent rate for the Class of 2018.

The overall goal for the final size of the class is 1,580, the same as previous years and consistent with the cap of 6,675 undergraduates determined by the 2010 Campus Plan. While the anticipated yield rate for accepted students, or the percentage of admits who decide to attend Georgetown, is 45 percent, Deacon said that interest, determined by number of college visits, among other factors, and likelihood of enrolling were not used as a factor in Georgetown’s admission decisions.

“The most common, disappointing issue is how many colleges are using interest as a factor, so that if they believe you’re not likely to enroll, they won’t admit you because that affects their yield,” Deacon said. “There are fairly elaborate tools that businesses have developed that will model your class out for you and tell you who to admit and not to admit, as opposed to just simply taking the best people, which is what we’re doing.”

Similarly to previous years, Deacon anticipated that 50 to 75 students would be released from the waitlist and approximated based on data from previous years that 1,200 students would initially accept spots on the list.

While schools often enlarge their waitlists as a sugarcoated way of denying applicants, Deacon said that Georgetown did not do so, noting that the average SAT score of students on the Georgetown waitlist was 1429 out of 1600, nearly identical to the average of 1436 for the admitted class.

“One of the trends that we have been seeing this year is that a lot of colleges are putting a lot of people on waitlists,” Deacon said. “[For Georgetown] this is not a polite way of saying no. … By not playing games with the numbers, we have very predictable numbers about how many students we will likely take off the list.”

Waitlisted students will receive final decisions by May 15. Transfer decisions will be released on a rolling basis until June 1. Deacon estimated 150 transfers would be accepted.

Accepted students have the opportunity to visit Georgetown the weekends of April 10 and April 17 as part of open houses run by the Georgetown Admissions Ambassadors Program. Their final enrollment decisions are due May 1.

4 Comments

I find it interesting that either the Hoya – or whoever supplied the graphic – did not bother including the percentage of white students admitted. Why were they not included? What would they have been referred to as? Would they have been referred to as European-Americans or just as white? Let us not forget that people of Asian, Hispanic and African decent have been in this country just as long as those of European decent, if not longer. In a time when the media, government and society has begun the slow process of identifying micro-aggressions towards black americans in particular, perhaps we should also look at how people of all races, colors and ethnicities are identified — what mirco-agressions exist there? Are we trading one for another? Is the notion of attaching the continent someone’s decedents are from to their Americanness as a form of identification, which considered to be politically correct (when we do not do the same for the whites), actually a micro-aggression?

Joe, it’s important to recognize that they did not publish the acceptance rate of any particular race. The chart I’m assuming you’re referring to was showing that 11% of all admitted students were African American, 17% were Asian, and 12% were Hispanic. These are not the acceptance rates for each of these groups.

Secondly, these groups are historically underrepresented minorities, so the intention was to show the effect of diversity initiatives and Georgetown’s efforts to give equal recognition to members of these groups that have faced addition adversity as a result of their race. I’m sure that this is no way an attempt to belittle minorities, but rather show their achievements. In 2010, 26.6% of Hispanic Americans and 27.4% of African Americans lived below the poverty, in contrast with only 9.9% of whites. We should therefore celebrate the accomplishments of those who have had additional hardship in their lives and were able to reach the same levels as those who had a privileged early life.

Let’s not make this into a conversation about the political correctness of racial terminology, and instead focus on the messages that were actually being expressed by the writers.

Are these statistics for the Class of 2019 or 2020? Are the current seniors the class of 2016? Juniors, Class of 2017; Sophomores, 2018; Freshman, 2019 and therefore accepted high school seniors would be the class of 2020, right?

Clarence Benjamin Jones, the speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, visited Georgetown on

DAN GANNON/THE HOYA
Panelists discussed the political future of Latin America at a student-organized conference in the HFSC on Friday.

CAROLINE KENNEALLY FOR THE HOYA
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (CAS ’57) delivered a guest lecture for 360 first-year law students in the Hart Auditorium at the Georgetown University Law Center’s McDonough Hall on Monday. He discussed his career, infamous dissents and originalist viewpoints.

ROBERT CORTES FOR THE HOYA
Graduate student goalkeeper Emma Newins played in her fourth consecutive NCAA tournament.

ROBERT CORTES FOR THE HOYA
Junior forward Grace Damaska scored the goal that tied the game and forced overtime in Georgetown’s loss to Hofstra in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

ELIZA MINEAUX FOR THE HOYA
Senior forward Brandon Allen was awarded the Big East tournament’s Most Outstanding Offensive Player honor following the Hoyas’ 2-1 victory over Creighton in the championship match.

ROBERT CORTES/THE HOYA
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic presidential candidate, addressed a Gaston Hall audience that could not accommodate all who started lining up before 6 a.m. Thursday.

STEPHANIE YUAN FOR THE HOYA
Scott Dikkers, founding editor and former editor-in-chief of The Onion, spoke to more than 300 students in the ICC Auditorium on Monday.

NAAZ MODAN/THE HOYA
The Mind-Body Medicine Program, which launched 13 years ago in the Georgetown University Medical Center, has expanded to undergraduates over the past few years, catering students in the School of Nursing and Health Studies and the School of Foreign Service who experience stress.

NAAZ MODAN/THE HOYA
All 95 Coca-Cola vending machines on the main campus and law center have been upgraded to be compatible with payments by credit card, Apple Pay or Google Wallet in addition to payments by cash and GoCard.